Trí Đức English - IELTS Reading Practice: Early Exploration of the West of Canada TRÍ ĐỨC ENGLISH IELTS Reading Intensive — Academic Reading Practice 1. Từ Vựng Core & Kiến Thức Cần Nắm (Theory & Vocabulary) Trước khi làm bài, hãy nghiên cứu kỹ các từ vựng và thuật ngữ then chốt xuất hiện trong bài đọc bên dưới: Sparsely populated (adj phrase) Thưa thớt dân cư. (Ví dụ: Western Canada was sparsely populated in the 1870s.) Enact (verb) Ban hành (đạo luật). (Ví dụ: Enact a law / Dominion Lands Act). Transcontinental railway (noun phrase) Tuyến đường sắt xuyên lục địa. Metropolis (noun) Đô thị lớn, trung tâm kinh tế/văn hóa. Land speculation (noun phrase) Đầu cơ đất đai. Ethnic homogeneity (noun phrase) Sự đồng nhất về sắc tộc. Economic depression (noun phrase) Cuộc suy thoái / khủng hoảng kinh tế. Immigrant / Settler (noun) Người nhập cư / Người định cư. Embellished tales (noun phrase) Những câu chuyện được thêu dệt, tô vẽ đẹp đẽ. 2. Reading Passage 3 Early Exploration of the West of Canada [A] By the mid-1870s, most of Canada's population was in the eastern part of the country. The western part of the country was sparsely populated, with no major cities or rural settlement areas. As a result, the federal government implemented a plan to encourage agricultural settlement in the West. Western rural settlement was desired, as the eastern agricultural land was already nearly filled to capacity and the large expanses of available land in the West offered great agricultural opportunities, including opportunities for Canada to grow its economy. [B] In an effort to get people to settle in the West and to increase the country's agricultural output, the Canadian government took measures to secure land there. The Dominion of Canada purchased Rupert's Land from the Hudson's Bay Company in 1870. Soon after in 1872, the federal government enacted the Dominion Lands Act , an act that enabled settlers to acquire 160 acres of free land as long as they remained on the land for a minimum of three years, made specific minor improvements to the land, and paid a $10 registration fee at the beginning. The government also created a Mounted Police Force in 1873 and then sent the Mounties west to secure areas for the future settlers. The initiatives implemented by the government worked, attracting settlers not only from Eastern Canada, but also from Europe and the US. The area of Manitoba was an area that particularly attracted an influx of people with the desire to start a new life. [C] The Canadian government had decided that the sure-fire way to protect the Canadian territory and to eventually achieve the goal of joining British Columbia with the rest of the country was to get large numbers of people to settle in the West. The settling of the West would then make the construction of a transcontinental railway a necessity; once that was established, the West could ship its agricultural products to feed the burgeoning urban industrial areas of the East. In turn, the East c...